By Richard Winters
My Rating: 5 out of 10
4-Word Review: Novelist hounded by stalker.
Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) is a successful novelist who travels to Rome, Italy to promote his latest work titled ‘Tenebrae’. Once he arrives, he is soon met by detective Germani (Giuliano Gemma) who advises him that a murder has recently been committed that was done in the style of one that occurred in his book. Neal scoffs that anything he’s written could’ve motivated someone to kill, but soon after he receives an anonymous letter from the murderer detailing how he’s going to commit more killings using methods that Neal described in his book. This then sets Neal off on doing his own investigation convinced that the police have a ‘tunnel vision’ and only he can find the true culprit using his own detective skills that he acquired while doing research on his book.
The film was inspired by writer/director Dario Argento’s own experiences that he had while meeting a fan via the telephone who initially introduced himself as being a great admirer of his work. The calls were friendly in nature at the beginning but became increasingly more menacing as time wore on. Argento eventually was threatened by the fan who claimed that his film Suspiria had affected him mentally and he wanted to harm Argento in the same way his movie had ‘harmed’ him causing Dario to leave the U.S. and return to Italy for his own safety, which is where he began writing the screenplay for this movie.
The sets are atypical for an Argento movie as they lack the garish colors and shadowy interiors most noted in his other films and this was intentional as he wanted to give the film a more ‘futuristic’ look and a one-note color scheme that more closely resembled cop TV-shows, which he felt the story reflected. Visual change is refreshing and helps the action seem more reality based versus in his other movies where everything seemed like it was set in someone’s dark fantasy in some parallel universe though I wasn’t as crazy about the camerawork, which was highly praised by others. Some may find the three-minute tracking shot that goes from one apartment window and across the complex to be captivating, but I found it more dizzying and unnecessary.
The story holds enough adequate suspense to remain moderately riveting and the pounding soundtrack by the rock group Goblin holds the tension. American actor Franciosa is nicely cast though Argento apparently had many behind-the-scenes conflicts with him, but the guy, despite his career decline, looks almost ageless and I was impressed with the opening bit where; despite nearing 60, he’s seen biking down a busy highway amongst tons of traffic with seemingly no worry or sweat. John Saxon though, the only other American in the movie, is badly wasted in a part that doesn’t give him much to do other than make a big deal about his hat that he seems quite fond of. Thankfully though, despite other performers having their voice dubbed, the film was shot in English in order to broaden its American appeal and so both of these actors speak with their actual voices while it’s quite evident with the others that they’re not.
The biggest disappointment for me were the special effects that look cheap and done with no imagination. The blood is bright colored and looks like dye mixed with water. The victims show no actual cuts, or abrasions and the blood appears painted on, or gently poured on via a cup and didn’t look authentic. There are also some ill-advised reaction shots where the film will quickly cutaway and show the victim looking scared with their mouth agape that came off as unintentionally funny. The only real frightening moment comes when a young lady gets chased down a dark street by a large dog who ultimately traps her inside the house of the killer, but other than that I was wanting way more than this film seemed able to give. I did though like one murder scene, which is purportedly one of Quentin Tarrantino’s all-time favorites, that features a woman getting her arm cut off and then proceeding to turn around and paint the walls of her apartment with its spurting blood though even this gets compromised because you can plainly tell it’s a mannequin arm when the ax goes through it.
The story gets a bit convoluted too as it adds in a flashback scene, without telling us it’s a flashback, involving a prostitute, played by Eva Robin’s, who really does spell her name with an apostrophe, and some teen boys that she meets on a beach. Only at the very end does it come into focus what this scene, which gets interspread throughout, means to the story, but until then it’s rather confusing why we’re seeing it and even a bit off-putting. It also features the prostitute as having a perfectly chiseled super model’s body, which I didn’t feel was realistic, and even though it’s supposed to be set decades earlier from the present day no effort was made to make it seem like it was shot in a bygone era.
Spoiler Alert!
The twist ending may be a surprise to some as ultimately, we learn that there wasn’t just one killer, but two of them. One being a TV interviewer named Christiano, played by John Steiner, who kills the first several due to his feelings that the victims were ‘immoral’ and then the last few committed by the protagonist himself. However, I started to suspect Franciosa when he’s found conveniently hit over the head by a rock, which supposedly ‘incapacitated’ him though I thought it was simply a ploy to divert attention away from him, so for me the final reveal was very predictable. Logically it doesn’t completely hold up either as his friend Gianni, played by Christian Borromeo, witness Christiano getting killed by Franciosa, though in disguise, and then runs back to the backyard bushes where Franciosa is supposedly hiding, but it didn’t seem like Franciosa would’ve had enough time to leave the murder scene and get back to the bushes before Gianni got there.
My Rating: 5 out of 10
Released: October 27, 1982
Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Dario Argento
Studio: Titanus
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Plex, Tubi
Scopophilia 